This invention relates generally to improvements in photographic compositors and it relates particularly to an improved character storage device and optical retrieval and projection system.
Photographic composition is a relatively new art, and the art has concentrated most heavily upon reliability and composition technique. These areas have been well developed and effort is now progressing on speed. News and communication requires ever increasing rapidity of typesetting.
The prior art does contain issued patents which have made an effort to increase speed and/or availability of front face designs by providing a plurality of rotating disc font source devices in one machine. An example of multiple disc source is Moyroud U.S. Pat. No. 3,602,116. In this patent a pair of interchangeable discs are removably mounted for rotation on a common shaft, and a lens turret is used for changing size. There are other patents by this inventor on the multiple projection concept.
A later development by a Japanese inventor, Nishikawa, set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 3,791,271 deals with the problem of languages which have a far greater number of characters than the English and European languages. Nishikawa uses a plurality of axially spaced coaxial discs with parallel flash beams directed parallel to the face of each disc, transmitted through characters, and then deflected parallel to and along the opposite face of the disc for selection of an individual character by manipulation of the output.
This latter development requires a considerable number of continuously operating lenses and reflecting systems with selection being accomplished by selection of a beam out of many beams coming from the group of discs.
Accordingly, the prior art to this time has suggested multiple disc font sources for two distinctively different purposes, but has not produced an ultimate font bank from which a large group of distinct character font faces can be stored and selectively projected for particular composition without the necessity of changing discs on a single or multiple spindle machine.